During the past decade or so, a variety of restructured meat products have come onto the market with varying degrees of success and failure. The demand for such restructured products has grown out of the burgeoning fast food industry and the need to make use of carcass parts that ordinarily would be unusable or at best would be ground for hamburger or sausage. Restructured meat products offer the advantages of uniform appearance, composition, shape and size, as well as being generally less expensive and easier to prepare than whole-muscle meat cuts.
Typically, the restructuring involves cutting the meat into small chunks or flakes and mixing, tumbling or massaging these with salt, phosphates and/or enzymes in order to draw the natural meat juices to the surface to aid in binding the meat pieces together. This mixture is then pressed together mechanically to produce the restructured product in various forms, such as roasts, cutlets or logs which may be sliced for sandwich meats and the like.
One recent example of such a restructured meat product and method is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,377,597, wherein untenderized lean meat chunks and elongated thin strips of meat are treated with an aqueous solution of salt and phosphate to extract myosin from the muscle in the meat. The restructured product is then formed from the interspersed and intertwined strips and chunks which are partially held together by the adhesive action of the myosin. products of this type have not been completely successful, because even the very small amount of salt used deteriorates the bright red color of the natural meat to a less-appetizing brown and also causes oxidation with the attendant rancidity problems in a relatively short period of time.
An example of a restructured meat product, which does not require the use of additives such as salt, phosphates, enzymes and flavorants, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,258,068 of Huffman. According to the Huffman process, fresh unheated meat is mechanically tenderized several times to release the binding materials from the meat and tenderize it. Thereafter, some of the tenderized meat in the form of wafer thin slices and some of the tenderized meat in the form of cubes (with connective tissue and gristle removed) are mixed, blended, formed into an initial desired shape, wrapped in a film-like material, freeze-tempered, pressed into a final desired shape and sliced for final freezing. While this process avoids the drawbacks of additives previously mentioned, the processing is quite long and complicated and the presence of chunks, even though tenderized, makes for a product with non-uniform tenderness and chewability.